EVALUATE, REFLECT AND CHANGE - How are team members changing?
Our experience: this was an element of our interdisciplinarity that we were pleasantly surprised by – how we as academics were altered by the process of being involved in our project. As discussed below, interestingly such changes were not always related to knowledge, but impacted upon a wide sphere of academic life. Furthermore, such impacts were reported at all levels of academic career from early career scholars to senior academic members.
Why?
An interesting and often overlooked dimension to interdisciplinary work is how academics involved in such projects are changed by that very involvement. This is probably overlooked because it is difficult to pin down, but if it forms part of your continuous evaluation of the project and reflexivity, then it can be mapped and accounted for. Furthermore, it could be argued that such changes not only highlight the interdisciplinarity of a project, but also elements of transdisciplinarity, which to use Carew and Wickson’s (2010 – see further reading) definition, is when participants in the process ‘experience some transformation in their knowledge or perspective’. Thus, analysing changes to academics (and all participants) is one way of evaluating and appreciating interdisciplinarity.
How?
Here are few examples of the way team members may experience changes to their academic knowledge/perspectives:
Research methods – this has already been mentioned in other sections, but has anyone adopted any new methods during the project? These maybe from another discipline involved in the project, or maybe they have created a hybrid version of a method using knowledge they have acquired during the project’s lifecourse.
Theoretical grounding – has anyone’s work been informed by theory which is closely associated to another discipline involved in the project? For example in our project one physicist took an interest and read some social science theory from the Science, Technology and Society (STS) literature.
Teaching – has anyone found inspiration from the teaching methods of other disciplines involved in the project? Perhaps through different approaches, such as enterprising educational methods like the studio model used by architecture, or peer group tutorials becoming popular within social science.
Resources – has anyone’s approach to resources (funding, staffing, equipment) changed as a result of being involved in the project and open to the varying ways of working of different disciplines? For example, members of our team were inspired by Physics use of employing students to help with elements of the project. Thus, they gained experience and we gained assistance.
Networks – this is relatively self-explanatory, but how have team member’s networks been enhanced through their participation in the project? Do they now have a wider network to draw upon, taking in other disciplines and stakeholders?